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Chunk your goals and get them done

Written by: Rich Grehalva

Article Overview: I have always liked the quote “Goals are dreams with a deadline” because it is so true. My clients come to me with wanting to get goals done because this has been a problem for them. When they describe the goals the problems become very clear. The most common is they are so big and broad it would be difficult to know if they achieve it. Let me give you example. Some of my coaching clients who are salespeople establish “Exceed quota” as a goal. I agree with them this is a great one but here is my question. Do we know how it will be achieved or when it will happen? You see that seems to be the problem most of us have.

Chunk your goals and get them done

Goal Chunking

“Goals are dreams with deadlines”
Quote by Diana Scharf Hunt

Some of us have general ideas and concepts; we see “The Big Picture” but do not get into the details. For others we get bogged down “In the Details” and lose the big picture. This is why sometimes we have problems meeting our goals.

A simple way to begin accomplishing goals is to apply a process called “Chunking.”. Chunking is a principle that applies to the effective communication of information. In the 1950s Harvard psychologist George A. Miller published a landmark journal article entitled "The Magical Number Seven, plus or minus two." Miller studied the short term memory. For example, how many numbers people could be reliably expected to remember a few minutes after having been told these numbers only once? The answer was: "The Magical Number Seven, plus or Minus Two".
Research suggests that human beings can understand and remember no more than seven plus or minus two items of information at a time. Think about your phone number. It is not an accident it is only 7 digits.
We know many of us have a lot more than “7 plus or minus two” goals. Take annual sales goals usually it has many outcomes for instance:
Total sales
Quota
Commission
Products development
Marketing
Appointments
Proposals
The list a few the list can be overwhelming, but not if we apply the chunking process.
So let’s begin working on achieving your goals.
Annual Goal Planning
The first step is to determine your annual goals.
You will need to list each goal and be specific. For example “Increase wins” does not let you know what exactly you will achieve, or more importantly “How will you know when you achieve it?”
Remember “Measurement eliminates argument.” Be specific for example replace “increase wins” with “Sign 100 new customers.”
After listing all of your goals with specifics, now you must decide which ones are the most important.
This is done by assigning a priority next to each goal. You can have multiple number ones, twos and threes, so determine a priority using one of following categories.
1- high
2- medium
3- low
Let’s review where we are:
You developed a list of annual goals with specifics.
You decided which ones were most important to the least important.
The next step is to determine which of the number ones is the most important to the least important.
This is done by assigning the letter A next to the most important, B to second most important and continue to do this until you have completed your number 1 list.
Congratulations! You now have your most important goals completed. Now it is on to the next step.

Take your number 1 A goal and divide it into 90 day specifics. For example; let’s take our goal of “Sign 100 customers” and determine the 90 day goal of:
15 new customers Quarter 1
25 new customers Quarter 2
45 new customers Quarter 3
15 new customers Quarter 4
Note in this example I did not take 100 and divide by 4 making it 25 a quarter because reality must be considered. Think about your market. Are there seasonality trends? Do your prospects or customers buy in certain months?
Now take your 90 goals and divide into monthly goals. Using our example from above it may be in quarter 1, again developing a realistic goal, it would look like this:
3 new customers Month 1
5 new customers Month 2
7 new customers Month 3
O.K. so far so good. Now here is what you do next:
What are the 5 to 7 tasks I need to do today to accomplish signing 3 new customers this month?
Write this down in your planner and then get it done.
If it is not done today, transfer to the next day until it is accomplished.
Your focus is placed in the most important thing you can do today to accomplish your goal.
Congratulations! You are on your way to tuning goals into accomplishments!
What does the sales funnel and accomplishing goals have to do with one another? Take a look at the diagram on the next page you will see that you already know how to do this. It is just presented in a different way.
Here is wishing you much success,
Rich

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Related Forum Posts
Re: Quote of the Day - "People are not lazy. They simply have im - To stay motivated and work to achieve your goals, first thing is that the goals must be ones that you truly want and believe you can achieve. If the goals are ones that you think you should have,(in other words impotent goals) then forget it, it just won't happen. MichelleJ
Re: Did you meet your goals in 2010? - Hey Yinka, I met some of my goals, but I didn't meet others. One of my goals was to get out of debt. I managed to do so, only to get back into debt due to an unforeseen circumstance. Business-wise, I didn't quite reach the goals I had; although, I came much closer than I did back in 2009. At least it was an improvement, and I expect to reach my goals for 2011. Best wishes for you, and I hope you can reach all the goals you set.
Re: Did you meet your goals in 2010? - [quote="ideasuniversity":1vr5xhmy]I believe we will all reach our goals this year. I have set realistic goals for myself this year. I am sure of meeting the goals or else I am just plain lazy.[/quote:1vr5xhmy] Good for you Yinka I will be rooting for you to succeed in achieving your goals this year. MichelleJ
Re: Did you meet your goals in 2010? - I believe we will all reach our goals this year. I have set realistic goals for myself this year. I am sure of meeting the goals or else I am just plain lazy.
Re: The Half time of the year is over - Hi Yinka, Yes, six months remain and most of my goals also remain... goals! That reminds me, it's time to head over to Kevin's thread on "goals" and hand in another report...


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